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UI responsiveness


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Hello all -

 

I have been using 3DCoat for a few years now (as a matter of fact, checking my purchase history tells me that I started using it in ... 2009 !). Until now my main use for it has been projection painting between 3DC and Photoshop, and it has been working great for that purpose all these years.

 

However I am now finding myself using voxel modeling more, and while I am delighted by all the fantastic tools that have been progressively added to the sculpt room I cannot help but notice some issues with the UI responsiveness. As a matter of fact I think I remember running into these problems all the way back to older versions of the program.

 

It's a little hard to explain. Basically these issues mostly occur when "power using" the program, that is to say, interacting with the UI very fast. I keep experiencing missed clicks and overall odd menu behavior. This is especially obvious when compared to native Windows programs.

 

Here is a video to illustrate the issue, comparing the behaviour of the 3D-Coat UI to Notepad :



The two main things I notice are :

- Dropdown menus disappear when the mouse cursor is not over them, whereas the default Windows behaviour is for them to stay open until the user actively closes them by clickout out of them.

- After opening a dropdown menu and pointing to other ones, these do not open until the users slows down the the cursor speed under a certain limit, whereas the default Windows behavior is to open other dropdowns instantly, regardless of cursor speed.

 

I understand that these might seem like minor issues, but they quickly become quite irritating when using the program for long periods of time. Note that I have nothing against original/innovative UIs like those of Zbrush or XNormal in principle - but here it seems more like a bug or issue that went under the radar than a conscious design decision. And of course I rely on keyboard shortcuts for my most used operations, but that is besides the point :)

 

My system specs are win7 pro x64 sp1 7601, GTX 750Ti, 24Gigs of ram - therefore this is not the system lagging behind.

 

Are other users experiencing the issue ? And what are your thoughts on this ? It personally bothers me quite a bit, making me feel like the program is often about to "break". And of course don't hesitate to let me know if that problem has been brought up in other threads already.

 

Thanks !

Edited by pior
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Also, another detail I noticed : when the program is out of focus (that is to say, when the top bar is grayed out because another program is being used) there seems to be an issue with popop windows not being selectable. In other words, the cursor somehow goes "through" them until a first click is detected. Again, a seemingly minor detail but still something that can cause problems.

 

Here is a video showing this behavior compared to the way Photoshop and Mudbox react in a similar scenario :

 

 

This is of course will be mostly noticeable with multi monitor setups, although I believe that this can probably happen in other cases too. I hope this makes sense !

Edited by pior
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I don't know if this will help your situation or not, but when I notice something glitchy with the UI, I close the app > go to MyDocs/3D Coat 4.5 > delete the Options.xml file (which can get buggered up once in a while) and the Options.Windows.xml file. You can re-install the latest beta build, but you don't have to. Opening the app should re-create new blank copies of those files.

 

Another thing you should do, as a precaution, is to update your graphic card drivers and if you are using a wacom tablet, it's important to update that. Just the other day I was experiencing miserable brush pressure response in the paint workspace. I tried to adjust different settings in the app and in wacom options panel, but nothing worked. I'm using Windows 10, and perhaps the Wacom drivers were meant for Win 8. After updating the wacom drivers, it worked great. Hope one of these things helps.

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Hi Abn - I too was wondering if the selection tool was the cause of the issue here but unfortunately this behavior occurs in other scenarios as well, as seen here :

 

 

(And just to be clear, I am not just hovering over the panels here but actually clicking them. Going forward I need to find out if OBS can display some kind of highlight to make this more obvious). That said, this is a much more minor problem than the one about the dropdown menus not catching up with the cursor.

 

As far as drivers are concerned, yup I am all up to date :) These tests were performed with a mouse btw. Now since you are under win10, may I ask you to quickly run these tests as well ? I'd be interested to see if other users are experiencing these issues. I doubt that the OS and/or my hardware and software combination is at play here since I remember running into similar problems a while back on a different machine, but that is worth investigating still ...

 

Overall I'd say that this kind of stuff is obviously not really affecting the actually features of the program but it *does* affect the perceived performance of the 3DCoat environment, making it feel less responsive than it could be, and also more error-prone.

Edited by pior
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Another UI issue I am noticing : there seems to be about 4 pixels of deadzone between each dropdown menu header (File / Edit / View / Textures, and so on), whereas the default Windows UI norm is to have no deadzone at all, which allows for drowdown menus to instantly switch from on to the other.

 

Again, a seemingly minor issue when described like this but definitely something that can get irritating in the long run :)

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Also : if the header of a dropdown menu is clicked more than once, with the time interval between two clicks being shorter than a certain threshold, the menu doesn't drop down and/or doesn't roll up in due time. As a matter of fact there is such a time threshold in native Windows app too, but it is much shorter.

 

 

Is anyone else experiencing this as well ?

Edited by pior
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And lastly, a note on sub-menus : these seem to disappear as soon as the mouse cursor moves away from them, whereas the expected behavior is for such menus to remain displayed until the user clicks away or performs an action.

 

This is tied to the first remark made at the beginning of this thread about dropdown menus , but I thought I'd try to be as precise as possible by mentioning the specific case of sub-menus. As a matter of fact this particular problem is probably what causes the most missed inputs for me when navigating the UI. Shown here :

 

 

(Note that there is a little ghosting issue going on in the video when sub menus are rolled out from the vox tree, but this is due to the recording software and is not relevant to what is being pointed out here)

 

Thank you for your time, and by all means please give these little tests a try !

Edited by pior
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Yes, there is a little dead zone between some of the top menu UI headers. I noticed that as well. 

 

My Thoughts on the issue...

Now some of what you discussed is more artist workflow centered than the program itself. I generally find no problem with the responsive nature of 3DC and like you have been using the program for several years (2007). My statements are not implying that what you like and I like have to be the same in how responsive 3DC is...

 

I like how the drop now menus disappear when I am not hovering over them. I do not have to refocus on the model by another click to keep sculpting. In Photoshop CC when the dropdown menus are persistent without choosing an action, I have to re-click inside the paint area or in an open area on the interface for it to refocus on the painting area. Now I can start to paint again.  That is an extra mouse click or pen click...

 

If this happened in 3DC having to click to refocus to start to sculpt again over the long haul that would become irritating to me... 

 

In 3DC, the focus appears auto.. I choose a tool header, menu, dropdown list etc and the focus shifts to that area, hover off the menu drop down list, vox tool panel etc and the focus shifts back to your model or the 3D viewport workspace, no reclicking required to re-focus.

I could see adding a little more dead zone around some panels as if you just move off a panel it disappears forcing you to reselect again.. 

 

Funny how minds work differently, From watching your videos, the disappearing bothers you and for me it is just what I desire for them to do...

 

EDIT: Sometimes 3DC will start to get some lag... a deep bug somewhere... AbnRanger suggestion is a good one to try... Another is the below.

I started to get some lag switching rooms and tools.. Ajz3d had a suggestion to try... It worked and my was lag gone... I do not have time to do any deep testing to report the bug atm... With all suggested fixes please backup things as necessary because we all run risk when trying to fix bug related problems with workarounds.

 

The below is the suggested fix and workaround for bug related lag. ToolsPresets in under 3DC's "My Documents" folder

 

"I once had this problem and I managed to narrow it to a folder called ToolsPresets. After removing it, everything was super fast again. I am not sure what this folder is responsible for though, as I didn't notice any changes in 3D-Coat after deleting it.

You might want to try it, just be sure to keep the backup.

You could also try deleting the temp folder, just be sure to store your Theme settings somewhere first."

Edited by digman
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Hi there Digman, thanks for chiming in. Nice to see some other early adopters out there :)

 

I totally agree that personal preferences strongly come into play, and of course no two users are alike. You are obviously making a very valid point about the "auto-focused" nature of the UI - that is to say the way menus disappear when the mouse is not hovering over them. This is a great example of a design choice taking its roots in established norms but expanding on them.

 

However, my main concern is error prevention - that is to say, in this specific case, making sure that the user does not have to perform an action multiple times because the environment is not reacting to inputs in a predictable manner. And while the auto-hiding of top menus behaves fine in that regard, there seems to be a definite issue with sub menus and Vox tree menus.

 

Below is another video illustrating this point. It shows that the main rollouts do have a little bit of timed tolerance built into them - what I mean by that is that these menus only disappear once the mouse cursor has been out of their active area for some time. But ! For some reason, this behavior is not respected with sub-menus and the Voxtree menu. Both disappear instantly, without tolerance, which is definitely is a cause for errors. As shown here :

 


 

Expanding on that, I would argue that the E popup menu (stroke picker) and the spacebar popup menu (color picker and sculpting brush picker) would also benefit for a little bit of tolerance. Another solution would be to give them a invisible margin - in other words, giving them a spacial tolerance rather than/on top of a timed tolerance. I hope this makes sense.

 

- - - - -

 

Regarding possible fixes for increased performance : I believe we are not talking about the same thing here. 3DC runs very well on my machine, with no performance drops or anything of the sort. What I am referring to in regards to menu delay is the way menus seem to not catch up with the mouse pointer by design, as shown in my earlier video report : www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9g5npuduGs

 

May I ask you to give this specific test a try ? I'd be really curious to see if this happens to other users. So far I have gotten one report confirming that it happens on somebody else's machine, but I'd like to gather more data points in order to submit a solid bug report on the topic. And I would have the same request regarding the way the first mouse click is being ignored when clicking within an unfocused 3D-Coat window, as originally shown here : www.youtube.com/watch?v=G13k6xd90Zc

 

- - - - -

 

Also, another issue I recently noticed : When running 3D-Coat in windowed mode, resizing the window makes the splash screen re-appear. Anyone else getting that one ?

 

Thanks !

Edited by pior
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This is a very good discussion and you have brought forwarded some good points which in turn in the past as led to changes in 3DC...  :)

 

You are correct, I addressed only the focus issue as you had stated that 3DC was not doing the expected behavior as notepad in regards to menus, dropdown list, etc.

 

I brought up the lag issue just in case you were experiencing any as I understood that you were not talking about the power of our computers.

 

I agree the tolerance settings need to be adjusted for consistency sake across all menus, sub menus and panels.

 

Generally the selections need to stay current with our on screen cursor's coordinates with whatever speed we travel inside the interface.

 

The opening speed issue of the sub-menus, a person working fast has to slow down for 3DC to open list, submenus, panels etc...

 

I would also like dead zones outside the panels to be increased some (if possible) so we can still move back over the panel and it does not close. As you pointed out, move out from a sub-menu just a little, move back, the sub-menu not only closes but the main menu closes as well. This forces the user to re-select the main menu and then re-select the sub menu again... We also should be able to close a sub-menu and have the main menu stay open for further selections if needed.

 

An example of this is right mouse / pen click on your model to bring up the Voxtree menu, and there you have a larger dead zone outside the panel at least over the model that is. Move outside the Quick Access panel just a tiny bit and she's gone...

 

All the above is of course continence with what the 3DC development team can do with the current code structure...

 

Two of my sons are Photoshop experts, The speed at which they did their production work is crazy, If they had to wait for photoshop to catch up to their speed, they would have gone bonkers by now...  :wacko:

 

I hope I have understood your meaning from the videos and postings, if I have misunderstood any area, forgive me...

Edited by digman
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Yeah man, we're definitely on the same page :) All I am trying to do is bring a little bit of focus on some specific points that might go unnoticed by a significant portion of the user base - which means that some of these issues are probably not often discussed or reported. I assume that ultimately the goal for the devs is to make the program as good as possible for everyone, so I hope these reports will prove themselves helpful.

 

So, may I count you as a user experiencing the issue of the main dropdown menus not keeping up with the mouse mouvements ? That would total to 3 confirmations of the problem out of 3 users so far. But of course I would still love to get more data points.

 

On the topic of a timed and/or space tolerance on mouseover above UI elements, here is a diagram showing 2 important popup menus that would benefit from some improvements (but of course this is true for all other popup menus as well) :

 

64yw6ax.jpg

 

I personally tend to lose the E menu pretty often, especially near its top edge. The spacebar menu can be problematic too, but that's less of an issue because it is quite large to begin with. Giving these popups a thicker margin would be a very straightforward fix, but a timed tolerance could be good too. As for anything UI/UX related it is always to predict which fix will end up feeling the most natural/unobtrusive. 

 

And again I'd love to hear of any reports on these UI/UX issues, confirming or invalidating them. The list so far is as follows :

 

1 - Main dropdown menus (File / Edit / View / ...) are not keeping up with fast mouse movements - Yes, I am experiencing this / No, I am not experiencing this. 

2 - Dropdown and popup menus are closing themselves when the mouse cursor is out of their surface area (as discussed above this not necessarily a bad thing per say, but I am still interested to know if this happens to everyone as this is not standard Windows behavior) - Yes/No

3 - UI elements are not interactive on the first mouse click when clicking within an unfocused 3DCoat window - Yes/No
4 - When clicking the header of a dropdown menu multiple times fast, the frequency at which said dropdown menu opens and closes is about two times slower than with native Window apps - Yes/No

5 - Sub menus (for instance File > Browse > Installation Folder), the Voxtree right-click menu, and the E and spacebar popup menus have no timed tolerance allowing for the mouse to go out of them then back in without them closing, whereas the main dropdown menus (File / Edit / View / ...) do have a built-in timed tolerance - Yes/No

 

Thanks in advance everyone !

Edited by pior
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